Category: Christmas

Spirituality. It’s what we should be in touch with this holiday season. But it seems we’re farther and farther away. In our predominantly materialistic/sensorial world, is it even relevant to be spiritual? We think yes. Never more so. Listen in now to Richard’s conversation with Dr. Claudia Pacheco.

December 22, 2010

The Great Spirit. Jahweh. Jehovah. The Almighty. God. Whatever name He goes by, He’s been honoured and worshipped by the greatest human beings in history. Only in our modern times have we systematically acted to remove the Creator of the universe – and of ourselves – from our human institutions. At great damage to ourselves.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, our Christmas show, the Modern Relevance of God.

Well, it’s a beautiful topic today because it speaks to something deep in all of us – even if we don’t acknowledge it. The sense of meaning we all look for and have such difficulties finding in our modern philosophy. God is largely out of the picture in human affairs today, and we’ve removed Him at great expense to our collective well being.

The modern scientists and thinkers have elaborated theories that try to explain existence and all the magnificence and immensity of the universe in materialistic ways, as not needing the “Immovable Mover”, as Aristotle called Him. And the pathological powerful who often held the reins of the churches have contributed to the modern day aversion to God as well. After all, who wants to consider a God who is intoned from high places as the bringer of pestilence and war and famine.

Those things have nothing to do with God but blaming Him for them marks an enormous projection into God of what we do. I am not talking about that vision of God at all, but of the infinitely beautiful and loving creator of all of this – and it’s this One we would like to talk about in our program today.

Just let me say one more thing before we begin. Buried in the release of all those diplomatic cables recently on the WikiLeaks site is some clear admissions from the U.S. Military and CIA that they are engaging in a series of actions designed to increase apathy among the world’s population so that leaders can ignore voters and a very nefarious agenda can be implemented.

I think this is linked with our loss of hope, and that means it’s all linked to our loss of contact with true spirituality and God. So here at Christmastime 2010, let’s consider the modern relevance of God. After you’ve listened, if you have comments, I’d love to hear them: rich@richjonesvoice.com

One is kindly and bearded and knows your behavior for the whole year. He’s also present in the minds of millions of young ones by the time December rolls around.

The other is the definition of kindly. He’s also bearded and all knowing.

But here the comparison ends. Because, unfortunately for our souls, we don’t remember Jesus all that well.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, the True Father Christmas.

Like many born in Christian countries perhaps, I grew up with a clear knowledge of the Nativity story. I even played the black Wise Man in my Sunday School’s presentation many years ago where we used black shoe polish to tint my lily white skin. It was an unremarkable production, probably, that nobody but me and the odd other participant even remembers. But it was highly significant nonetheless because it was a version of a story that was being rehearsed and presented in churches large and small at around the same time all around the world. We were remembering in our humble ways the true reason for Christmas. And that made it beautiful.

I don’t even know if they still go to all that trouble in St. Peter’s Anglican Church in my hometown of Victoria, but I hope they haven’t given in to the politically correct mania of excising all the Christian customs in an attempt to make the people from other cultures feel more at home. It is, after all, our customs that make us unique from other cultures. If I’m traveling in Europe, I’m not there to experience Canadian ways of life after all. The ideal is cultural diversity, isn’t it? Not cultural homogenization.

Like I never understood all those British tourists going to the south of Spain and requesting egg and chips.

But this I’m talking about speaks to a bigger point, for it’s not the customs only that are in peril. It’s Christmas itself. Or at least the true Christmas, for the frantic, stressed, commercial, no-parking-in-sight one continues unabated.

So let’s try to explore the real Christmas spirit. And remember if we still can what the Being whose birthday we celebrate at this time was trying to teach us.

At a time in our history when our latest Nobel Peace Prize recipient brazenly prepares us to accept war by stating that we would not see an end to violent conflict in our lifetimes and that he was unable to be guided by the powerful and peaceful examples of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, we can do no better than to call on the example of the greatest of Beings … Jesus Christ.